A little later, as we walked back to his own beast, El Glaoui said, with a certain puzzlement, that he praised Allah for he had found a brother in an expected place. He did not speak with any particular warmth. Perhaps he suspected me of attempting to ingratiate myself with Moslems. Miss von Bek, riding by as I climbed into my own unyielding saddle, flicked at pretty hair and observed that there was surely no need for me to maintain my play-acting for their sake. Unless, she added, I intended to take up a collection later. In which case she would be delighted to reward me with a dirham or two for my undoubted talents. She rode on before I could give her my witty reply.
It was clear, however, that she was recovering from her embarrassment and seemed ready enough to continue our friendship. For my part, I bore her no ill-will.
Soon afterwards, El Glaoui retired into the wagon he used when the roads were good and I saw nothing of him or Rose von Bek until we stopped to make camp in a valley so saturated with perfume from the wild flowers that I feared I must faint into some exotic dream from which I would not awake for years. As the sun came down upon the crest of the western hills it spread light like an old glaze across the landscape. The flowers lost none of their glowing vitality. They seemed to have existed since the beginning of time.
We were eating the substantial remains of the previous night’s feast, the smell of couscous and fatty meat at vulgar odds with the surrounding paradise, when I remarked to Count Schmaltz that this scenery made a man understand how civilisation and aesthetics might take many forms. Who, after all, needed to create pictures here when such a magnificent picture appeared without fail every year? But Schmaltz amiably disagreed with me. ‘Only if you judge civilisation by its arts, my dear fellow. I do not. I agree that art can take many forms, some of them alien to our own ideal. But institutions are another matter. Our good old-fashioned Northern European institutions of justice and equality, they are a form of madness to our host. He pretends to understand them, but it is almost impossible for him to imagine a society in which the power is shared between a wide variety of interests and classes. He perceives civilised Europe as nothing more than a subtler, more successful and perhaps more devious example of his own world.’
‘Who is to say he is not right?’ I asked reasonably.
But this irritated Schmaltz. His face became melon-pink again. ‘Oh, do not mistake me.’ He glanced around him as he wiped his fingers on a napkin. We were eating according to local custom, with our right hands only. ‘I have considerable respect for El Glaoui’s Realpolitik as he applies it. But he grows ambitious. Soon he will try to dictate terms to us. It is like the Bolsheviks. Mark my words. Let them get on with their “social experiment” by all means, but they should not try to bully us.’
I agreed with him, though unsure of his point. I asked him what moral superiority the West could claim, when it singularly failed to come to the aid of fellow Christian nations. Were we superior to the Arab in this respect? Or the Bolshevik?
He became more impatient. ‘I see no reason, Herr Peters, why a nation which does not habitually torture and otherwise terrorise its citizens should accept the dictates of one which does. In common morality, my dear sir, we are demonstrably their superiors.’
‘But by how fine a degree?’ It was Mr Mix going by with his film camera. He had passed on before Otto could reply, so the German turned to me again. ‘I still do not take readily to being treated so casually by a nigger,’ he confided. ‘But these Americans are all the same, they say. Do you enjoy Hollywood, Herr Peters?’
It was my second home, I said. A golden dream of the future. He was taken aback by this. I did not know it was then fashionable in German military circles to denigrate everything American, especially if it came from Hollywood or New York, while in France the fascination with the United States was unabated. For them it was a place where all myth was made reality. I found both points of view rather conventional. Mr Weeks’s tolerant bemusement at the more extravagant aspects of American society was easier to share.
These were to be the first of several ongoing conversations, all of them refreshingly original, which the four of us (Mr Mix continuously aloof, the Pasha and Miss von Bek generally absent) came to enjoy almost greedily during our various necessary stops. After my first flush of zealotry, I now confined myself to lowering my head and murmuring the prayers where I stood, in the manner of Turkish aristocrats, explaining to my new comrades that I believed it important for diplomatic reasons to acknowledge the Muslim religion here. Though they were never easy with this aspect of my life it did not affect our hearty arguments over a pipe and a discreet glass of brandy at the end of the day (the Pasha also offered hashish) while we gathered around our camp fire, relishing the smell of the wild heather and the carpets of flowers, the wind still carrying the faintest sting of the desert back to us, the flickering light and the comradely warmth, the busy sounds of the camp slowly fading into silence as we sat close to the peaks of the mountains which the Greeks had named for the Titan who held the world upon his back. Perhaps this was also a symbolic union of Christian gentlemen sworn to uphold the name of their redeemer and take upon themselves the responsibilities of their civilisation, for the duties and sacrifices of Empire were frequent topics. Mr Weeks said there was nothing to beat a good chin-wag with a bunch of brainy chaps, each an expert in his own line. It was convenient that we all spoke French, but when the Sapper seemed to be flagging we would lapse into English.
No subject was disallowed and my only regret was that our host and Miss von Bek were not there to join in, since both were first-rate minds. However, this allowed the Pasha himself to become a frequent topic. It was Count Schmaltz’s opinion, for instance, that El Glaoui was consciously creating for himself a romantic legend, well aware of the additional power this gave him, especially in liberal European circles. ‘Those fellows allow you any infamy so long as you represent yourself as some sort of underdog.’ The Pasha received the support of the conservatives with his military actions and his absolute dedication to the French cause, but he welcomed those bohemians whom he knew to have influence in their own countries. It was second nature to a Moslem leader to play such complicated power games. ‘But the whole thing is a fantasy. It is founded upon the most appalling injustice and cruelty, which we are never allowed to witness. Did you find the dungeons in the castle the other night? I did. And saw - and smelled - something of their contents. The burning garbage hides much worse. These people still dismember their living enemies in public. There are slave markets in every village. The family - and consequently the blood feud - are their only law. Yet our great German playwrights and our composers come here to be charmed by a character from the Arabian Nights and return to Berlin to describe the civilised wonders of the Pasha’s court. There are too many people willing to believe in marvels and sentimental folly these days, my friends.’
Puffing upon his narghila, Lieutenant Fromental shook his head in amiable disagreement. ‘Why should we not believe in marvels and miracles and happy endings, m’sieu? It is the same with God. What on earth is the point of not believing?’
‘God is not an escape but a duty,’ said Schmaltz, a little upset. ‘I was not referring to the kinema, Herr Leutnant, but to current urgent social problems. To politics. I am sure we all find it very pleasant to enjoy Herr Peters’s displays. We all, I hope, require a little bit of fun sometimes. But to apply those values to reality - surely you would not argue that the morality of The Masked Buckaroo should be brought to bear on modern society?’
At this point I was forced to interrupt. ‘I would suggest that you view the picture-drama before you judge it, Herr Count. It was made in the same moral tradition as Birth of a Nation.’’
He was good enough to blush and offer me a gruff apology. He did not, he added, refer to present company in any of his pronouncements. He had every respect for the professions and the moral values of others. We lived, after all, in a modern world where certain realities had to be accepted. And thus, a mode
l German, he returned to his original point. ‘The world’s predicament is too dangerous for any indulgence in fantasy, certainly not of this present glorious charade which, I admit, we all are enjoying. But we do not personally,’ he added, ‘very often have to overhear the screams from the dungeons.’
Mr Weeks murmured that he thought if there were any irregularities of that sort the French authorities would investigate them and, if necessary, correct them. There were, after all, certain bargains one had to strike with a powerful ally. The French could not - realistically - be seen to be supporting a tyrant.
‘So he makes the tyranny less visible. And we all accept his hospitality and act to help him hide his complex systems of torture, extortion and terror!’ Schmaltz would have none of it. He was of that class of over-sensitive German who made trouble for the Turks during the Armenian crisis. I could only admire him, without necessarily always agreeing with him, or even liking him.
‘What action would you suggest we take?’ enquired Fromental mildly. ‘We cannot employ an army of spies.’
‘It is not the barbarism abroad I speak of, Herr Leutnant, but the sleep-walking at home. That’s my main concern.’ The German was friendly. ‘We should all be looking to our domestic problems first, forgetting old differences and harnessing the positive energy which exists in every ordinary person.’
Fromental wanted to know if ordinary decency could be ‘harnessed’ and if so how.
‘Through community and idealism,’ replied the Count, busy with his meerschaum, ‘not through communism and rhetoric. We must all pull together for the common good.’
Lieutenant Fromental did not put his scepticism into words.
That evening the Pasha invited us to his tent. ‘This has become a rare privilege since he met your beautiful colleague.’ Mr Weeks winked at me. He had not detected, any more than the others, that my relationship with Miss von Bek had been other than professional. They had chosen to assume simply that we were engaged upon some joint mission of the Italian and British governments. I think it suited neither of us to make any more of our story than the Berbers would. Stories become very swiftly embroidered when translated, as it were, into literary Arabic. Fromental, my only confidant, agreed. “Those who live under tyranny, Mr Peters, make no progress. They learn only how to stay in one place. They learn a form of silence: the banal expressions of bureaucracies and armies, the conventions of the ruling élite, who fear a living, questioning, language. Thus the public language is allowed to say nothing new, though the people make new language every day. This was how Arab literature ceased to be the seminal literature of the mediaeval world, supplying the West with almost all its present story-forms and narrative devices. New Arabic is nothing more than a way of retelling the same myths in different guises. One perceives this effect in the Turkish Empire and everywhere the hammer and sickle crush and cut. There are no advantages to tyranny, save for the tyrant.’
‘And his,’ I counterpointed, ‘is an inefficient method of keeping power, as the financiers of New York will verify!’
El Glaoui was, I must admit, the very model of a modern benevolent tyrant; urbane, expansive, generous and humorous, anxious to understand other points of view than his own, eager to embrace the twentieth century while supremely certain of the superiority of his own way of life. As we seated ourselves on the cushions of his great tent while our hands and faces were washed by his handsome negro slaves (he was rumoured to hide his Caucasians for fear of giving Europeans offence) I was immediately seduced by his hospitality and his charm. Each guest was welcomed and questioned as to his needs. His individual tastes were courteously recollected by the Pasha. Mr Weeks, beside me, murmured that he wouldn’t be surprised if the old boy hadn’t been educated at Eton. Lieutenant Fromental was listening carefully to Count Schmaltz addressing his host on the matter of the recent Riffian wars.
‘But you flew, did you not, Lieutenant Fromental, with the French air force?’ The Pasha signed to include the young man and allow him to speak for his own people.
‘For a few days, Your Highness, yes. As an observer, of course. I’ve never felt any wish to control one of those things!’
Rose von Bek spoke up. ‘I envy you, Lieutenant.’ I had hardly noticed her in the shadows. She wore a long becoming gown, heavily embroidered in the Berber style, and her head was covered by a kind of turban. Berber women frequently went unveiled and frequently only covered their faces in imitation of more sophisticated Arab customs. In the villages, I had been told, it was considered uncouth rather than irreligious to go uncovered. (The cinema, says Mrs Fezi, changed all that. Again, she blames the Egyptians. ‘Now they are all film stars in the country towns,’ she says. ‘But we didn’t wear veils, any of my family. And that was in Meknes.’)
‘Envy me, mademoiselle?’ said my young friend in surprise.
‘You flew at will over this wonderful country. We, on the other hand, scarcely glimpsed its beauty before we crashed.’ (She did not see fit to explain why we had observed so little of the passing landscape!) ‘I wish I could have been your pilot! What an awfully thrilling sight. The Riff massing in all their glory!’
‘Actually, mademoiselle,’ said Lieutenant Fromental in some embarrassment, ‘we were bombing villages. With the Goliaths, you know. They are the very latest heavy bombers. The smoke and the fires tended to obscure our view of the Riff.’
‘Six thousand hours of flight and three thousand missions. What was it, forty bombing flights a day!’ The Pasha exclaimed all this in terms of the warmest admiration. ‘I read it in Le Temps. Forty bombing flights a day!’
‘And still Abd el-Krim and his Riffians were able to bring those planes down. Sharp-shooters lying on their backs in rows and firing in concert! Aeroplanes make no real difference to warfare, in my opinion. Only to civilians.’ Mr Weeks was a confessed admirer of the rebel chief. ‘How many squadrons did you have out there? Fourteen? It was folly. The British had equally disastrous experience bombing the Kurdish villages in Iraq. The aeroplane can never be an independent agent of warfare. It should no more operate on its own than should artillery. In the end it’s always up to the infantry. Or,’ he admitted, after due consideration, ‘sometimes the cavalry. I doubt if the French would have had a war in Syria at all if it hadn’t been for their indiscriminate bombing in the first place. The Times said so quite clearly. Destroying villages, of course, gives the enemy scores of homeless recruits.’
I began to laugh at this. ‘Come now, Mr Weeks. You’ll be telling us next that the airship is an invention of the Devil!’
He shrugged and held up his hands, trying to smile as he dropped the subject. His hatred of every kind of flying machine was well known.
‘However, the aeroblane is effective,’ pronounced the Pasha suddenly, silencing us. He paused to take some stuffed sweetmeat from the tray his slave offered him, ‘as Mr Weeks says. As artillery is effective. Did you know, Mr Weeks, that much of our family’s bower was founded on the ownershib of one Krubb cannon?’
Mr Weeks had told me as much, but he feigned ignorance.
‘A gift from God,’ said the Pasha. ‘With that one excellent German gun - ‘ a further acknowledgement of Schmaltz’s somewhat tender feelings ‘ - we were able to bacify rebellious tribesmen, unite the whole region as one beoble and imbrove our friendshib with the French.’ He smacked his lips. He dipped his fingers to be washed and dried. ‘But there are certain barts of the South which even a Krubb cannon cannot reach, where we are still irritated by unregenerate outlaws and rebels who make cowardly raids into our lands and then skulk away again. We discussed this frequently with General Lyautey, that great man. In Tangier and in Baris.’ El Glaoui nodded in deep self-approval. ‘He told me that if I wanted an air force I should not ask the French for one. It would be imbolitic. But if I were to build my own small fleet, merely a squadron or two, no one would steb in my way.’ He looked into the middle distance as if his eyes already rested on his gleaming battle-birds, ready to carry the flam
e of a great new Moorish civilisation, an empire which, arm-in-arm with the French Empire, would civilise the whole of Oriental Africa. I recognised a man of vision as thoroughly as he recognised me. I felt like leaping to my feet and swearing that, in a year or two, I would give him the air power that he craved. I would give him more than that. I would give him nomad cities, moving slowly across the dunes on their mighty tracks. I would give him roads burned into existence by fusing the sand with heat-beams, just as my Violet Ray had fused the stones of Kiev. At that moment, our eyes met. He smiled, a little dazed. I would give him Utopia.
I became immediately loyal to this shared vision. I was in no doubt that it would soon begin to materialise and, once my ideas were in full realisation, I would be invited to Rome.